This is the role of interactive content tools. Instead of compelling customers to simply consume the content you produce — from advertisements to newsletters to social media posts — these tools make it possible to create back-and-forth interactions that help customers feel like part of the conversation.
In this post we’ll break down what these tools are, how they work, and where they benefit your business. Then, we’ll offer a look at 15 of the best tools worth exploring.
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What is an Interactive Content Tool?
An interactive content tool makes it possible for users to actively engage with your content rather than simply consuming it. Examples of interactive content include polls, quizzes, reviews, or social conversations that help boost customer interest and create ongoing connections.
Why Use an Interactive Content Tool?
Interactive content tools help you understand what consumers really want. By starting conversations rather than simply talking, your brand can identify areas for improvement and deliver personalized content to users.
Benefits of an Interactive Content Tool
Some of the biggest benefits of using an interactive content tool include:
Improved connections
Interactive content tools make it possible to cultivate two-way conversations with potential customers. While many of these conversations are asynchronous — they may respond to a survey or quiz and your then team follows up — they set the stage to create better connections over time.
Enhanced engagement
By giving customers a voice, you help cultivate engagement. Think of it like a college class — if the professor simply lectures for an hour, students will struggle to stay focused. If they encourage questions and discussions, meanwhile, it’s easier to stay on track.
Increased conversions
Better connections and more engagement help drive conversions. Why? Because with so many choices now available, customers choose brands that make them feel like more than simply a sales statistic. Interactive content also helps you stand out from the crowd — customers are more likely to remember who you are and what you offer if they’ve actively engaged with your brand online.
Reduced Bounce Rate
If customers don’t see anything of interest on your website or mobile app, they won’t stay long. Interactive content provides a reason for prospective buyers to at least stick around and see what type of experience you’re offering, in turn making it more likely they’ll continue down the sales funnel.
Ready to get started with interactive content tools? Here are 14 great options.
15
- Guides.Co
- ThingLink
- Ceros
- Involve.me
- Visme
- Outgrow
- Zembula
- SnapApp
- Qzzr
- Apester
- Mapme
- Survey Anyplace
- Ion Interactive
- Playbuzz
- Calculoid
1. Guides.co
Guides.co's mission is to "connect people who know with people who want to grow."
In an effort to accomplish this, they've created a platform for users to create and share interactive guides on whatever they're passionate about. The guides employ text, images, video, and embedded files to create a rich, participatory experience for the reader.
By including a comment field within the guide, readers can share feedback and ideas to fuel meaningful discussions. This feature aims to promote a sense of community and open up a line of communication between guide users and consumers.
What we like about Guides.co:
Guide.co naturally cultivates connection by allowing companies to build knowledge-driven resources that target passionate customer segments and let these customers provide feedback. The result? A constantly-reinforcing content stream.
2. ThingLink
ThingLink is an interactive media platform that allows users to bring their photos and videos to life through the inclusion of rich media links.
By adding multiple engagement points to a photo or video, users are able to create a unique experience that encourages the user to interact with the content for longer.
This approach is not only interesting, but it works to reduce high bounce rates by providing readers with multiple content options that are related to the content on that page.
What we like about ThingLink:
Giving customers options when it comes to interaction helps reduce their tendency to glance at your page and move on to something else. Rather than funneling them down a specific path, ThingLink lets companies create media-rich experiences that let customers choose their own adventure.
3. Ceros
Ceros is a platform that provides users with the powerful tools they need to create high-quality, interactive content without having to rely on developers.
Through the use of a drag-and-drop functionality, Ceros enables users to create six different types of content:
- Shoppable Catalogs
- Lookbooks
- Magazines
- Infographics
- Nanosites
- Ebooks
All Ceros designs start simple and come to life through the implementation of interactivity and animations. Through the incorporation of elements like video and interactive buttons, transforming a static piece of content into something more dynamic is quite simple.
Unlike a traditional ebook, an interactive approach makes it easier for you to guide your readers through the content in its entirety with the hopes that they walk away from it feeling more educated and sales-ready.
What we like Ceros:
Interactive tools and animations help breathe life into static ebooks and other online formats, in turn making it easier for customers to engage with your brand and discover your unique value proposition.
4. Involve.me
Involve.me is a no-code content builder that makes it easy to create quizzes, surveys, and calculators. The solution also integrates with CRM tools and common email marketing services and makes it possible to customize deployments with available webhooks.
And it doesn’t stop there — Involve.me also supports payment integration with processors including Stripe, Square, and PayPal along with more traditional payment methods such as Amex, Visa, and Mastercard.
What we like about Involve.me:
Involve.me is a full-featured interactive content tool that lets you customize your customer approach. It’s also free to get started and features three paid tiers for more advanced content creation.
5. Visme
Visme is a powerful content creation platform that allows anyone to create dynamic and interactive content without the need for coding, design skills, or a professional developer.
Visme offers high-quality, pre-made templates that can easily be turned into interactive content, along with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature to turn any design asset you want into an interactive trigger or element.
Visme allows you to make any content you create interactive and animated, including:
- Presentations
- Training Manuals
- Infographics
- Ebooks
- Reports
- Lead Magnets
- Social Media Graphics
- Maps & Charts
- And so much more
Visme’s interactive and animation features allow you to link pages or slides to objects, create a clickable table of contents, add hover effects, or clickable pop-ups. Along with animated icons, illustrations, and special effects.
Spice up your content by embedding polls, quizzes, videos, or GIFs, or integrate your team’s favorite apps such as Hubspot, Salesforce, Typeform, Loom, to create more personalized content and streamline your content creation process.
Once you’ve designed your interactive content to your liking, you can download it in a variety of ways that maintain its interactive integrity, such as PDF, GIF, PPT, HTML5 code, SCORM, or xAPI file, or as a live website that reflects real-time updates/changes.
What we like about Visme:
With Visme, you have more control, flexibility and customization when it comes to creating interactive content. You’re not simply stuck with a template or limited interactive features that leave you wanting more, instead, you can make your content as dynamic and interactive as you want it to be.
6. Outgrow
Along with a host of interactive content options, Outgrow makes integration easy. Embed the tool on your webpage, in a popup, or even in chat to start connecting with customers ASAP. Then, leverage the tool’s intelligent analytics and data integration to see how your interactive content is performing over time. This makes it possible to better tailor your efforts — such as quizzes or surveys — to match customer preferences.
What we like about Outgrow:
Outgrow lets you get your interactive content campaign off the ground quickly with more than 1,000 pre-optimized templates.
7. Zembula
Zembula is all about improving your emails with interactive content. Its two biggest selling points are Smart Banner and Smart Block — Smart Banner dynamically updates emails with cart and item information when emails are opened, while Smart Block provides personalized customer data such as sale offers or point balances to help drive more sales.
Pricing with Zembula for 1:1 impressions starts at $0.50 per CPM with discounts for higher volumes.
What we like about Zembula:
Zembula leverages data to help you design great email images, and images can be layered with whatever data sources work best for you. Even better? Emails are updated dynamically when opened to provide a personalized experience no matter when they arrive.
8. SnapApp
Looking to build a dialogue and drive more engagement for your brand? SnapApp is an interactive content platform that enables users to create and analyze nine different types of interactive content assets:
- Assessments & Personality Tests
- Calculators
- Knowledge Tests & Quizzes
- Polls & Surveys
- Interactive White Paper
- Interactive Infographic
- Contests & Sweepstakes
- Brackets
- Galleries
But wait, there's more ...
SnapApp offers integrations with marketing automation software (HubSpot's Content Hub included), CRM platforms, CMS solutions, and email service providers to provide users with an opportunity to leverage their existing investments.
What we like about SnapApp:
Rather than focusing on a single interactive option, SnapApp provides a variety of choices to help you find the content type that best fits your current sales approach.
9. Qzzr
Qzzr is all about asking the right questions. Already used by some of the world’s most popular brands — such as Marriott, eHarmony, and Uniqlo — Qzzr lets you create and customize quizzes designed specifically for your audience. Along with support for text, images, videos, and animations, Qzzr also provides translations for multinational campaigns.
What we like about Ozzr:
A simple and streamlined visual interface makes it easy for your team to quickly create new quizzes and define specific outcomes.
10. Apester
Apester lets you create interactive content experiences that can be repurposed across multiple channels to help save you time and money. This create once, share often approach lets you post optimized content across websites, blogs, mobile applications, and social media channels to capture the most customer interest possible and help foster ongoing communication.
What we like about Apester:
Along with easy content creation, Apester also collects both zero- and first-party data (with consent) to help fine-tune your campaigns and improve overall conversions.
11. Mapme
Ready to get where you’re going? Start with Mapme. This interactive toolkit lets you build interactive maps with no coding required — customize your map style, markers and layouts to help capture customer interest.
Mapme is a great tool to both help customers find your business or navigate your location, and also lets you embed calls-to-action into your maps to help drive conversion.
What we like about Mapme:
Mapme offers seamless integration with platforms such as WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Twitter, and Facebook, and also lets you easily add specific content types including PDFs, YouTube, and Vimeo videos — and even offers support for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR)
12. Survey Anyplace
The function is in the name: Survey Anyplace lets you create and deliver surveys anytime and any place to understand more about your customers. Using auto-generated, personalized reports your team can create personalized surveys that speak to customer preferences and concerns and help better engage your target audience.
Survey Anyplace offers a 7-day free trial of the service, followed by four tiers of pricing starting at $39 per month for 400 monthly responses.
What we like about Survey Anyplace:
Survey Anyplace uses a triple “A” model — ask, assess, advise — to provide actionable results. First, the tool helps you define relevant questions to ask, then assesses answers to create a useful result. Finally, it lets you return personalized advice to customers via email or an auto-generated PDF.
13. Ion
Ion is a comprehensive interactive content platform used by brands such as DHL, Dell, and Symantec. Using Quick Start templates, companies can quickly build interactive experiences that help capture customer interest.
Ion also captures first-party data to help drive lead generation and offers A/B testing to help you see which campaigns are performing and which still need work.
What we like about Ion:
The numbers speak for themselves: Ion helped companies drive 10x more sales opportunities, increase conversions 4x and boost revenue by 82 percent.
14. Playbuzz
Playbuzz offers a host of pre-built quizzes that let you quickly capture consumer sentiment. You can also subscribe to Playbuzz and create your own quizzes to match current marketing goals and help encourage customer interaction across your site.
What we like about Playbuzz:
Playbuzz quizzes are divided into categories to help you quickly find what you’re looking for, and new quizzes are constantly being added to help keep your brand on the cutting edge.
15. Calculoid
Calculoid lets you quickly add calculators to your website or mobile application, making it easy for customers to do some quick math around pricing, payments, or other variables.
Calculoid includes templates for pricing, ROI, loan, costs, savings, and online store calculators, and lets you design and brand your calculators so they match the look and feel of your website.
What we like about Calculoid:
Calculators support all math functions and are secured using SSL. In addition, they’re mobile- and touch-screen friendly to make deployment and integration easy.
Cultivating Connecting with Interactive Content
Interaction and communication are now the keys to effective conversion. Customers want conversation, not just consumption, to feel connected with brands.
Interactive content tools make it possible to improve interaction with customers by giving them a chance to voice their opinion and share what matters to them. Ready to take your content creation to the next level? Start with one of the 14 interactive options listed above.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
